I apologize to The Shelby County Trustee’s Office for asserting that a file had been changed compromising local transparency. After a 4 hour investigation, I discovered what I had done wrong in saving the 2018 Trustee Report on my computer which caused the file to not convert to Excel. 

To that extent, I am protective of the integrity of the Trustee PILOT Report and have witnessed other authoritative public data sources compromised and feared it may be happening again. Again, I apologize The Shelby County Trustee’ s Office. 

With that said, significant County administered opportunities exist for improving local public-private measurement and transparency of the economic development space given the significant taxpayer investment where LOSB solutions exist. 

I do not apologize for the following regarding the persistent prosecution of runaway elitism. 

• Asserting bogus PILOT projection accounting
• Botching the workforce development system
• Asserting excessive incentives occurring on the back of a community
• A $1.7M misappropriation by a local abating board

Thank you. 

First the annual Shelby County Trustee PILOT report is an invaluable authoritative data source for which the Shelby County Trustee’s office should be commended. As a data source, it provides taxpayers with a County wide view of payment-in-lieu of taxes (PILOTs) programming. Without the report, taxpayers are blind. 

The report is produced by the Trustee’s office originally in Excel and then converted to PDF for web based publication. Commercially available software allows taxpayers the ability to convert the report back to its original Excel spreadsheet version which is what I did with the report in December. For research and analytical purposes, Excel allows users to sort and perform calculations. 

But for some reason, a newly posted 2018 Trustee PDF report no longer allows the user to convert to Excel. This obstructs taxpayer analysis and results in the user having to transcribe over 10,000 fields to Excel which would take a community researcher some 4-6 months. Its my guess the file conversion was authored within the bowels of County government and not by the Trustee Administration. My experience with the compromised data source can be seen in the video above.  

The Trustee staff has always been helpful and transparent with my requests but I wanted the community to know of the type of manipulations that routinely occur somehow that obstruct transparency and inquiry. 

Its the type of obstruction the local elitist would in fact support. After all, the community is disconnected from reality on several fronts while blind to the total amount of total annual tax incentives occurring throughout Shelby County and its municipalities. Excel allows for estimates to be made through calculations as many of the abating boards do not publish anything that would accommodate a global Shelby County view of tax incentives. 

Further, the elitist have authored bogus accounting for 8 years with EDGE to justify excessive incentives for the small few while bothcing the workforce development system and administering MWBE programming seemingly to benefit highly established and in some cases affluent companies. Given this pattern of behavior by the elitist, this obstruction is the type the elitists would author to disconnect the community from reality in knowing an estimated total of excessive corporate/real estate incentive amounts.

Solution 

Given this obstruction, the following specification is being requested for the 2019 Annual Shelby County Trustee PILOT report. 

Publicly downloadable and user unprotected 2019 Trustee PILOT report with individual fields populated in Excel

Fields – PILOT Owner, Property Owner, Abating Board, Board Parcel Number, County Parcel Number, Begin Date, End Date, Assessment Taxes, Contract Taxes, Difference

Report Tabs – Summary, ICC Contrcts, IDB Board Contracts, IPH/IHE/IMC Contracts, Debt Service Contracts, Contracts, Aged by Expiration Date and Delinquents.

TIF report available in Excel with above specified populated fields. 

While the above minimum requirements will get taxpayers by, given an estimated $120M in annual estimated incentives, a more robust measurement solution is need to inform taxpayers. A County administered web based application is needed for consolidated tax incentive management for multiple abating boards that would facilitate PILOT sizing, PILOT contracts, MWBE compliance tracking and etc. 

While in the throws of the Coronavirus, runway elitism persisted at the EDGE Board on Wednesday for the benefit of the small few. Citing competition with Southaven, MS., the racially diverse EDGE Board unanimously approved an excessive and sick $2.4M DHL PILOT to retain 105 already existing low wage warehousing jobs. 

The DHL PILOT award violates, just about, every leg of the Brookings FOCUS Economic Development plan while exploiting the taxpayer in a majority black community in need. The problem is, like workforce development and so many other plans in Memphis, the FOCUS plan was never implemented or measured.

Had the plan been implemented, the DHL PILOT would not have even been considered as one of the FOCUS plan goals was to “Diversify the Economy Beyond Logistics”. Incenting the retention of low wage warehouse jobs is anything but the former while in competition with Southaven, MS., which also violates the regional collaboration leg of the FOCUS plan. See below graphic taken from a FOCUS Plan document:  

The fact is that this DHL incentive is another real estate deal and not economic development. The package mirrors in many ways other excessive EDGE job PILOT real estate deals such as LeSaint Logistics and Mark Anthony Brewing.

All of these deals abated taxes on existing property, which is expressed through EDGE’s community reinvestment credit (CRC) program in exchange, unfortunately, for low wage warehousing jobs in these cases. These elitist real estate deals are unjust to the taxpayer in a majority black Memphis community in need. 

Some Facts About the DHL PILOT

An excessive $2.3M will be transferred from a Memphis community in need to a $69 billion dollar DHL company headquartered in Bonn, Germany and a real estate landlord located in Atlanta, GA. 

Had the jobs been retained in Southaven, MS. there would have been virtually no job loss for Memphians.  

By abating taxes on existing property, which cost taxpayers $1.2M, EDGE increased their fee revenue by more than 100% from $57K to $117K. 

Conclusion

Runaway elitism, carried out by a racially diverse public-private complex, continues in the midst of the Coronavirus while feeding on a majority black Memphis community in need. The winners are a $69B DHL company headquartered in Bonn Germany and a real estate landlord in Atlanta, GA. Oh well. So much for taxpayer justice in an impoverished Memphis community in need…..

Currently, I am writing a white paper entitled “The Problem is Elitism; Not Racism – The Case for Taxpayer Justice”. The paper will conclusively prove that current day imbalances are being accelerated by elitism and not racism. This is important because spending time and energy on solving the wrong problem can result in more of the same while distracting from problem root cause. 

In the meantime, as I complete the white paper, I am rolling out some data tools that will be used in the paper. The “Hierarchy of Community Actualization” will be the conceptual basis of the white paper where social justice along with fiscal conservatism informs taxpayer justice.

Next, I am launching a locally owned small business innovation in the MWBE Dashboard measurement platform. The platform can be accessed by clicking on the MWBE button at the top of this page or accessing http://mcclmeasured.net/mwbe.

Both, The Hierarchy of Community Actulaization and The MWBE Dashboard are scary in their simplicty. Both are designed to help Memphis evolve out of the stone age through public measurement and effective governmental oversight. 

The National Civil Rights Museum (NCRM) is a world class tourist attraction. I know. I have been 4 times and taken visitors from NYC who frequent museums that were blown away by the high quality NCRM production. 

At the same time, the NCRM is not a local social justice activist organization. Over the weekend, Terri Freeman wrote in the Daily Memphian about the possibility of a new national initiative for the impoverished. But sadly, in it’s hometown, the NCRM lacks a local agenda to combat poverty. They stay out of the fray on such local questions. And if the NCRM decided to enter the local debate as a social justice organization, they would find themselves taking on their very own NCRM Board and Memphis Tomorrow founder, Pitt Hyde.

Memphis Tomorrow is a corporate CEO organization that is down in every category over 20 years while their initiatives use your Federal, State and Local tax dollars for community betterment. The fact is that in a majority black community in need, true social justice starts with taxpayer justice. And unfortunately, in Memphis, so called “social justice” and marketing initiatives hog the news cycle where taxpayer advocacy should otherwise reside. Social justice marketing and initiatives, in many ways, are locally mistaken for taxpayer justice. If Memphis is to move forward, in a majority black community in need, social justice starts with taxpayer justice. 

If one just scans the NCRM Board of Directors one will see a plethora of companies that benefit from excessive corporate/real estate incentives on the back of majority black community in need. Or one will find organizations that don’t need the help, that have benefitted from MWBE programming. This local economic development and social justice programming is largely birthed out of the archaic and highly deficient Memphis Tomorrow organization while being accommodated by a lack of local legislative oversight. 

The overarching problem in Memphis is not racism but runaway elitism. Unchecked runaway elitism is carried out by a vast and racially diverse Memphis Tomorrow public-private complex where fundamental social justice in the form of taxpayer justice does not exist in a majority black community in need. 

To gain a better understanding of social justice marketing, we will pose some questions to our moderators Farmer Joe and Church Lady.

When Nike discontinues the sale of the Betsy Ross sneaker, is that social justice?

No sir. That is marketing. Nike, a so called “social justice” company, annually transfers an excessive $4.5M in corporate incentives from one of the most impoverished areas of the country in Memphis back to one of the least impoverished areas in Portland, OR. And to make matters worse, Nike has neglected to regularly report MWBE spend to EDGE, which at this late juncture, anything that they might now report, would likely be highly questionable. 

Is MWBE programming social justice?

Well, isn’t that special. MWBE programming in Memphis is a marketing tactic to justify excessive corporate/real estate incentives for the benefit of the small few. Further, upon investigation, the primary beneficiaries of MWBE programming are long standing, well established and in many cases affluent local entities. Some of these companies do not even reside in Shelby County. 

Are Pitt Hyde and Fred Smith community visionaries ?

No Sir. Pitt Hyde and Fred Smith are elitist corporate socialists. Their influence and power has resulted in a rigged system that serves the small few, accommodated by a lack of local governmental oversight and stone age measurement tools that have resulted in community ecosystem decline. 

Conclusion

Before there is social justice, there must be taxpayer justice to serve a majority black Memphis community in need. 

FEBRUARY UTILITY BILLS

In this analysis, 66% Higher Total Utility Bills in North GA  Chattanooga, TN area over Memphis. 

• MLGW Memphis – $209
• February North GA Utility Bill – $348
  • Scana Gas – $211
  • Georgia Power {Electric} – $80
  • Ellijay Water – $57

This is a data Bust Out of MWBE spend momentum. Social justice and MWBE is a marketing scam for the benefit of the small few authored by the Memphis Tomorrow complex and accommodated by a lack of governmental oversight.